The present invention relates to a method for allocating storage areas, and more particularly, to a method for allocating the areas formed on a storage device in a storage management system, to a storage management server, and to a system including the same.
Systems for supplying storage to multiple servers using a SAN (Storage Area Network) environment are already commercialized. Recently, there is a tendency for all usable storage devices to be managed as single, shared virtual storage, regardless of the installation location and vendor of the storage device constituting the storage. When the virtualization of storage is thus realized, a user can reserve and use storage areas without being aware of an actual device.
For example, Japanese Patent Laid-open No. 2002-222061 discloses a technology for creating, for a plurality of servers in accordance with the predetermined abstract demand of a user, referred to as a policy, an appropriate storage area for storing information on the performance, reliability, and other factors of plural disk devices.
By the way, DBMS (Data Base Management System) for storing data in a shared database and responding to the access requests received from a plurality of users or application programs is already put into practical use. In some cases, when a user is to reserve either of the storage areas that the DBMS reserves and uses for purposes such as data storage, backup, disaster recovery, and operation work, the user must be aware of the installation location of the device. For example, a backup area against disk failures needs to be allocated to a location close to the backup source in order to allow rapid recovery from the failure. Conversely, it is preferable that a backup area against failures due to disasters should be reserved at a location distant from the backup source.
According to the above conventional technology, the virtualization of storage makes storage areas physically invisible. The virtualization of storage has an advantage in that all areas can be logically handled. At the same time, however, because of the virtualization, there occurs the problem that it is not possible to reserve a storage area or to acquire an area with awareness of the installation location of the storage device.